


Lead Me to Death

by karatezla



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:05:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karatezla/pseuds/karatezla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's August when Jay encounters a less than welcoming party of undead upon his arrival home from college. A mysterious call from his high school friend Alex Kralie reunites him with old faces, but for how long? Trapped in their small Alabama hometown fighting for their lives, they're under the clock to get answers and escape before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The sweltering Alabama heat was enough to kill a man, of that much Jay was sure. The late summer sun baked the air into the high nineties and soaked it with suffocating humidity. He had arrived early at the University, heading for the library with his laptop where he could sit undisturbed in the air conditioning until he was driven out by hunger.

It was a trip he made nearly every day to escape the stuffiness of his apartment. He only had class in the morning on Mondays and Wednesday, so all of his extra time he devoted to cleaning up and editing tapes for one of his many on-the-side film projects. It was a hobby—whenever he went out he always brought his camera with him. He didn’t always catch anything exciting but he enjoyed the extra perspective the videos gave him.

It was late into the summer semester when Jay stumbled upon some old tapes he had kept from his high school years. It was mostly shaky footage of him and his friends screwing around; Alex trying to unsuccessfully ollie his skateboard, Tim blowing smoke rings, Jessica putt-putting at the nearby arcade.

Jay watched those last tapes twice. Jessica. He remembered that day clearly—she was no good at putt-putting. He winced at his own voice mocking her lightly. Her laughing. Tim was there, too, but the camera was rarely on him. She told him later that she never intended to be more than friends, but that couldn’t make Jay forget how happy he felt when he was with her.

He had lost touch with all of them when he left for University. Alex and Jessica both went to the same college and were home for the summer while he made up credits from his Fall semester. Jay hadn’t heard from Tim since high school.

It was a burger and fries for lunch. Outside was a sweltering 97 degrees so he stayed local, jumping in his car to drive just down the road. He was halfway through his Coke when he felt his phone go off in his pocket. Fishing it out, Jay squinted at the string of ten numbers that were displayed on his screen without any identification. He decided not to answer.

A couple came in the door, walking to the counter to order. Jay watched the guy put a protective arm around the woman before he was pulled back by his phone vibrating to alert him of a voicemail.

“Jay.” He recognized the voice right away—the lack of greeting was an Alex Kralie signature. “Jay, you need to come home.”

Jay pressed his lips around the straw, pulling up another mouthful of Coke through a frown. Why was he talking so quietly? His thumb found the volume.

“I can’t explain what’s happening over the phone, but you need to get back here. Something’s happened.” _Click._

Jay looked at the screen. He redialed the number but it rang through to an impersonal voicemail. He hung up before the beep. It was Thursday—Jay was sure he could make it back home for the weekend. Alex’s call didn’t exactly sound urgent, but Alex wasn’t one to call for help, either. He’d make the drive tomorrow.

The ice crackled in his cup as he dumped his trash in the bin.

* * *

It was almost midnight when Jay got another call. He was sitting on his bed, surfing the internet in an attempt to lull himself to sleep when the phone began vibrating violently against his side table. He reached over, looking at the number.

It was Alex.

Jay felt a rush, his weariness vanishing as he answered the phone. “Alex?”

“Jay!” Alex’s voice barked out of the phone. “Where are you?”

Blinking a few times, Jay skipped saying hi and fast-forwarded to “I’m still at school.”

There was a pause. Something loud thudded unevenly in the background. From the lag in Alex’s response, Jay knew that answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “You can be here tomorrow, right?”

“That’s what I was planning on.”

“Meet me at my old place—our old place. That house we rented last year.”

“Sure, yeah.” Jay frowned. “Alex, what’s going on?”

As if to answer Jay’s question, the thudding turned into a loud crack, and the sound distorted as Alex started moving around.

“Just meet me, Jay,” Alex said. He hung up.

Jay looked at his phone for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next. If he tried to call Alex back, he was more than sure that nobody would pick up. He looked at the clock. 12:14 am. No answers would be had sitting in his bed but he was too awake now to sleep.

Closing his laptop, Jay climbed out of his sheets and started to pack.


	2. Chapter 2

The drive home was just over an hour and a half. Jay planned to stop at his parents’ house first and drop off his stuff before heading out of town to the house where Alex wanted to meet him. He thought it was odd that they weren’t meeting at Alex’ apartment. It only deepened his curiosity as to why Alex wanted him to come back so badly.

Before he left, he tried calling Alex. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer—after one ring it went to Alex’s stoic answering machine. Jay cleared his throat before the beep.

“Hey, Alex, I just thought I’d let you know that I’m on my way.” Jay felt oddly like he was reporting to a spouse and not a friend he hadn’t seen in over a year. “I’ll see you when I get there.”

He was nearly home on the highway when flashing police lights caught his attention ahead. The road was blocked off and an officer directed his vehicle down a side street. It was inconvenient, but Jay was close enough to home to know the back roads. It was only an extra five or six minutes.

The detour went almost around the entire town. After the third roadblock, Jay was not only frustrated but puzzled. _Something big has happened,_ he thought. How did Alex expect anyone to meet him when all the roads were impassable?

Twenty minutes into the extensive detour, Jay figured he wasn’t going to be able to take any main road into town. He needed to find Alex first—he’d get to his parents’ house eventually. It wasn’t like he hadn’t stored his clothes in his car before, anyway.

Jay knew of a couple old farm roads out past the park in which Alex shot one of his mediocre student films. The park wasn’t that close to downtown, so he hoped desperately that the police hadn’t cordoned it off. If he could leave his car somewhere in the back of the park, it was only about a two mile walk to the house.

The light, happy feeling of success met Jay when he turned onto the first overgrown dirt road. It stretched out in front of him, turning into the wooded park less than two hundred feet ahead. There wasn’t a cop in sight. His car crept along, following the road until it ended in a small clearing on the edge of a corn field. Parking it in the shade of a tree that overshadowed the undergrowth, Jay grabbed his pack with his camera, laptop, and an extra set of clothes and set off along the edge of the cornfield.

He couldn’t help but wonder why the police were preventing anyone from entering town. The first thing he thought was that they might be redoing all the roads, but it only took him a second to dismiss that. It was ridiculous. Whatever was happening had to be related to why Alex had called him—the two events by themselves were too close together and unlikely to simply be a coincidence.

Had something happened in town? Was there an oil spill? Tankers came through town all the time, so one of them tipping or crashing wasn’t out of the question. It still didn’t explain why they’d close _all_ the roads, though. None of the radio stations had commented on what was happening, only saying to provide an extra ten minutes or so to your commute for the detour.

If the radio stations weren’t worried about it, why should he? Jay figured if he encountered a police officer on foot, he’d ask. He’d find out from Alex soon enough anyway.

***

Jay estimated it was a five minute walk once he hit actual pavement. The road was deserted as far as he could see, so that part of the trip he hoped would be just as easy as the cornfields. Not having to worry about getting hit by a car was a load off his mind. Most of the road was bordered by trees or corn anyway, so even if he did have to get off the road quick there were lots of places to hide.

He was nearly to the house when he heard movement. Someone was making their way through the corn on his right—as tall as it was, he could see the tassels jerking around as the person pushed their way through.

“Hello?” Jay ventured. He half-hoped it was someone he knew. As great as nobody driving on the road was, it was more than a little disconcerting.

The movement of the tassels changed direction and suddenly a woman fell out of the stiff, green stalks. Her white blouse was stained with wide swaths of brown and green and her pencil skirt was torn. She might have done her hair that morning but it was a mess now.

“Oh, my God,” he said, running down into the drainage ditch. “Are you alright?”

There was a soft grunt as the woman got to her feet. One black heel had managed to stay on her left foot. Jay remembered her leg clearly as he reached out to help her—the hose torn and run, a blackened scrape on her knee, the ankle turned at an odd angle.

“Ma’am—?” A red flag sprang up in his mind, quickly followed by more as he noticed other things. Her shirt was covered in more than just dirt. There was a wide, dark bloodstain on her lower back. Her arms were scraped and her manicured hands were caked with mud and God knew what else. She had a musty smell to her, as if she had been outside for more than a few hours—like compost but worse… road kill or—

Only when she looked up at him, her dirty hand snatching at his outstretched wrist, did he realize that something more might be wrong than a businesswoman wandering through a rural Alabama cornfield.

From out between dry, cracked lips, a terrible, bestial scream erupted. She yanked his arm toward her mouth.

Startled, Jay tried to pull away, but the woman was stronger than he expected and she didn’t let go as he fell onto the slope tilting back to the road. They grappled for a second—her on him as he struggled to push her off without hurting her. He had managed to pry her fingers loose just long enough to roll away when a rather large man in a stiff collared shirt came bursting out of the corn in the same manner the woman had.

Jay stumbled onto the pavement, running a few yards down the road. His wrist ached where the woman had grabbed him. Another man had followed the second from the corn and the tassels waved madly behind them as they tried stiffly to climb the slope. The large man had spotted him and raked his fingers to the soft dirt beneath the grass, baring bloody teeth in a snarl as he started climbing out of the ditch.

After checking to make sure his pack was still intact (it was), Jay took off down the street. In his car, he’d be to the house in less than a minute. He knew he wasn’t the fastest runner, but there was some primal instinct that seemed to take over his legs and it seemed he couldn’t run fast enough. Jay sprinted down the middle of the road. He wasn’t sure what had happened to those people and he didn’t know where to begin to guess what was wrong with them. All he knew was that he didn’t want it to happen to him.

The white siding of the house came up on his right. Jay cut across the yard and ran right up to the drive door between the house and the shed that acted as a garage. “Alex,” he croaked. He was caught between shouting and attracting the people or walking in unannounced. In the end, he erred on the side of caution on all accounts.

Pulling open the outer door, Jay knocked weakly. His chest felt like it was going to explode. The last time he had run like that was gym class in high school. All those days with his laptop hadn’t done anything for his endurance and he could feel it coming back to kick him in the butt.

“Alex,” Jay repeated when he managed to swallow the saliva that had thickened in his mouth. He was doubled over in an attempt to calm the cramp that had started to wedge its way into his side. “Open up.”

No answer. What if Alex was dead? Jay felt his thoughts scatter in a hundred different directions. No, worse, one thought raced to the forefront—what if Alex was one of those people? Down the road, Jay heard a scream that chilled him to the bone.

He tried the door. It was unlocked, so he let himself in as quietly as he could as to not disturb anybody or anything that might be lurking nearby.

The house was as empty as the day he moved out. Jay closed his eyes for a second, trying to focus his breathing. It echoed in the bare entryway.

“Alex?” His voice rang off the walls. Please let there be someone here, Jay pleaded silently. Someone _normal._ He didn’t dare say anything more out loud.

The polished wood floor was dusty in the hall. It was clear it had been awhile since anyone had been in there, but the door was unlocked. Jay walked into the kitchen, staying close to the cabinets. The picture window in the front of the house lit up the entire space but he also imagined it gave anyone outside a great view of him creeping through the kitchen and front room.

Jay had just turned the corner when he heard shuffling behind him. His heart sped up, running straight up his throat as he turned around. “Alex—?”

“Jay!”

Standing in front of him was Tim. He held a baseball bat wound back behind his shoulder, ready to swing at any point. There was silence between them as each came to quick conclusions about the other. Tim was a high school friend of both Alex and Jay’s. He had grown up on one of the largest farms in the area and his priority had been learning how to run it instead of going to college. Jay felt relief shudder through him, warmer than the shots of adrenaline his body had supplied to get him there. Tim wasn’t Alex, but he wasn’t trying to attack Jay, either.

Tim was naturally stockier than Jay and it was clear he hadn’t shaved or showered in a while. His red flannel shirt and jeans were covered in dirt. There was no blood that he could see. Tim had the look of a man forced to live on the edge for a few days, but he was nowhere near rabid.

“Tim,” Jay said. There were a million questions he wanted to ask. What was going on? Where was Alex? What was he doing there? He didn’t know where to start, but Tim had other plans.

“Hurry,” Tim said, relaxing his arms and beckoning him back toward the kitchen.

If Jay needed prompting, the muffled sound of screeching filtered in from outside.

“Come _on_ ,” Tim urged. He stood at the door to the basement, holding it slightly ajar.

Following Tim to the door, Jay retreated down the steps a little before turning back. “Wait.” He slung his bag onto the top stair, reaching inside to retrieve the camera.

“Jay—” Tim bounded back up the stairs. “Don’t let them see you.”

Jay poked the camera out into the kitchen, pointing it toward the picture window. He could see the street through the viewfinder as a gray sliver of asphalt backed by the deep green field of corn. He was about to turn back and ask Tim about Alex when the large man appeared, walking, hunched, down the road. The woman followed him, dragging her injured ankle. Both of them had passed the driveway when the second man appeared. 

Jay leaned against the door, pressing the camera against the cupboard to keep from shaking. He felt Tim come up behind him. The second man stopped in front of the house, looking around him before he opened his mouth. The resulting scream was so loud that Tim and Jay both jerked back out of sight of the window.

“Shut the door,” Tim hissed, grabbing for the door handle. “Jesus, Jay, get back.”

Running down the stairs, Jay rushed out into the cold, dim basement. “Tim, what—”

Tim shushed him, going to the window nearest to the street. It was barely low enough for Tim to look out the window on his tip-toes. Jay followed, camera first, but the second man was already gone.


	3. Chapter 3

“It happened too fast for any of us to really learn what was going on,” Tim explained. He split a granola bar with Jay, grabbing a folding chair from the garage when he was pretty sure the coast was clear. They sat a few feet apart in the simple, cement basement while Tim tried to talk Jay through the past few days.

Tim played with the plastic foil wrapper as he spoke. “I mean, they had some stuff on the news, but basically they told us to boil our water and stay away from the river. Stay inside. Things like that. It was too late. People had already started turning into whatever they are now.”

“Do you know what it is? What happened?”

“No,” Tim said, shaking his head. “It’s in the blood, though—spreads though bites like some zombie… nightmare.”

Jay learned that the police were part of an outer-barrier of security. There was a military force as well. In retrospect, he had no idea how he had gotten in as far as he had without encountering a single living soul that didn’t want to eat him. Tim was equally as surprised.

“Power went yesterday. They must have cut the lines or something, because that comes from down the river. I lost cell reception sometime this morning.”

And then the million-dollar question.

“Where’s Alex?” Jay asked.

Tim curled the foil into a tight ball. “I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair, seeming to think about something before he continued. “He called me yesterday. I think he’s been trying to get some answers and was close to something—he told me to meet him here. Obviously he hasn’t shown up.”

What could have happened to Alex was up to Jay’s imagination. He could only think of the worst.

“Is that why you’re here?” Tim looked at Jay.

“Yeah. Alex called me yesterday, too. I didn’t know it was like this or I would have been here last night. He didn’t tell me anything.”

* * *

There were no blankets or pillows. Tim didn’t lock any of the doors but he suggested that one of them stay up at a time just in case Alex decided to show. Jay agreed. If he were being honest, he was more afraid of one of those _people_ getting in, but he didn’t say anything to Tim. From the way Tim acted when he arrived, it was pretty obvious felt the same. Jay didn’t argue when Tim volunteered for the first watch—his eyes ached. He hadn’t quite pulled an all-nighter, but the few hours that he had snatched the night before hadn’t been adequate, even by his minimal standards.

After pulling out his laptop (which, surprisingly, appeared to be undamaged), he used his pack as a pillow. It took no time at all for him to fall asleep.

It wasn’t long before he woke up again to the sound of thunder. He was sweaty, the imprint of the ravenous woman on his eyelids. He didn’t remember much about the dream—only that it wasn’t pleasant and he had no desire to fall back asleep. At no moment did he question if he had been attacked. His body was stiff and his back ached almost as much as his wrist as he rolled over and the icy cement reminded him of where he was.

It was nearly pitch black in the basement. Just enough light filtered in the slim windows near the ceiling for him to see that there was nobody else in the room. The two chairs were empty and Tim was gone. The only sounds were the rustling of his clothes and the dull scrape of his shoes on the cement floor.

“Tim,” Jay whispered.

More scraping as he pushed himself to his feet. He went to the window and looked out. It was a clear night—a half moon peeking above the uneven tree line and flooding the yard with enough light for Jay to see nothing out of the ordinary. The moon gave a silver lining to clouds moving in to the West. Occasional flashes warned him of the oncoming storm.

He crossed back across the room to the stairs. The staircase itself was pitch black so Jay climbed slowly, feeling his way with his hands and feet. The wood creaked with every movement and made him wince, fostering a sour pang in his stomach that told him if Tim was dead, he was next. _Tim isn’t dead, though,_ Jay thought to himself. _That’s ridiculous._

Opening the door slowly, he peeked out. The house was brighter than the basement, but not by much. Jay recalled the layout of the house and stepped into the kitchen. Both the side door and front door were shut and there was nothing outside the picture window. 

“Tim?” Jay crept around the corner to the hall. All of the doors were open but one.

Jay poked his head in every room before he ended up at the closed door. “Tim,” he said, putting his hand on the doorknob. When there was no answer, he turned it.

Tim sat under the window, his fingers pinched around a cigarette. He looked up when Jay came in but didn’t say anything. The room was hazy with sharp smoke despite the cracked window and Jay resisted the urge to try and clear it with his hand when he closed the door behind him.

“What time is it?” Jay asked, sliding down the wall next to Tim.

Tim shrugged, exhaling a thick stream of smoke. “You’ve been out for seven or eight hours, so two? Three?”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I would have woken you up if something had happened. Figured you needed the sleep.”

So Alex hadn’t shown. Jay didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved—he had needed the sleep. “I can take watch now if you want,” he offered.

Tim shook his head. “It’s fine,” he muttered. The ashes from the cigarette fell onto the crème-colored carpet. “I haven’t been sleeping well, even before this whole thing.”

They sat together in the silence. Outside, cicadas were thrumming between rumbles of thunder. The smell of rain from outside pushed weakly against the smell of smoke. Aside from Tim smoking (which he tried not to do inside usually, at least before this miniature apocalypse), it could have been any summer night. Jay and Tim had never been best friends, but they ran in the same friend circles, especially senior year when they would all hang out in Alex’s backyard on the weekend getting drunk on cheap beer.

It seemed like years ago. As much as Jay enjoyed college, he missed having friends he saw sober and on a regular basis. Guys he could sit next to for hours, saying whatever knowing that they wouldn’t judge him and vice versa. He wasn’t necessarily social but he liked being around familiar faces. He liked not having to explain himself—not reinventing his identity with every conversation and not knowing if he’d ever talk to that person again.

For as little friendship that had developed between Jay and Tim throughout the years, Jay was glad for the unspoken camaraderie.

Jay was on the verge of dozing off again when he heard footsteps. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tim freeze with the nearly-gone cigarette to his mouth. Then there was a female voice, soft and too muffled to make out what she was saying. Jay felt his stomach turn over.

Tim sat up, pulling his legs beneath him as he grabbed the baseball bat on the carpet to his right. He looked at Jay, ticking his head toward the closed door.

They both exited the room and moved down the hall. Before they got back to the kitchen, the front door opened and someone shushed the girl’s voice into nothing. More footsteps—shoes on linoleum.

Raising his bat, Tim sidestepped around the corner and stopped. Jay felt his heart racing. It could be Alex. Those _people_ didn’t talk, didn’t shush—they screamed. The room flickered faintly and Jay counted the slow footsteps. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Thunder. Tim turned the corner.

There was a moment of chaotic indecision as Tim faced the barrel of a gun, his bat raised primitively in the face of the firearm. It would have taken an instant for Alex to pull the trigger. Thankfully, he had more control than that.

“Tim,” Alex said, lowering the gun a couple inches.

Jay moved out into Tim's shadow. Alex looked disheveled but not dirty—his hair stuck together in clumps and he had the darkening of facial hair around his mouth. He wore his favorite blue-striped hoodie and jeans. Amy, his girlfriend, stood behind him. Jay’s breath caught in his chest. Amy was Jessica’s roommate. Where was Jessica?

The nub of a cigarette dropped from Tim’s lips and onto the floor. “Where have you been?” His voice cracked, echoing tightly through the house.

Alex shushed him, too. “We need to get out of here.”

“What’s going on?” Jay said. He felt like a broken record.

“They’re following us,” Alex sighed, pushing the safety on and tucking the gun under his shirt. “I think we lost them in the woods but they won’t be far behind us.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Who’s following you?” Jay echoed weakly. Alex was already back to the door. Amy trailed him, followed by Tim.

“I’ll explain when we get somewhere safer.” 

Jay remembered his bag in the basement. “Hold on,” he said, pulling the basement door open. He heard Alex sigh but he didn’t hear them leave.

The flurry of thoughts that had been running through his head the past 24 hours were back with a vengeance, but Jay blocked them out. There was only so much speculation he could take. With a smooth swipe he pushed the laptop back into the bag. After a moment of consideration, he left the camera in his hand. He always thought more clearly when he saw things a second time around.

Alex didn’t say a word when Jay reappeared at the top of the stairs. They all stepped out the front door, Tim last, shutting it gently behind him. Lightning lit up the night sky and a cool wind blew in from the west. Instead of going down the road to the right, Alex turned left, back the way Jay had come the afternoon before.

At first, Jay felt panic. The _people_ had gone the other way, but in the dark none of them could see as well and they were surrounded by trees and corn. With the wind and thunder they couldn’t hear anyone sneaking up on them. In the flashing light, all the tassels were moving. It made Jay uneasy. He clutched his camera and jogged up to Alex.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Alex shook his head. “Somewhere less conspicuous—we need to get out of the area but they took my car.”

“I have my car,” Jay blurted.

“Where?” Alex looked at him, his stride never missing a beat. 

“Rosswood Park.”

There was never a question of if they could get out. It wasn’t an option.

* * *

It had begun to rain by the time they found Jay’s car. It was right where he left it, covered in stray leaves and bird poop. He retrieved the key and unlocked the doors.

“You can throw things in the back,” Jay said. His car was a mess, he knew. His duffle bag full of dirty clothes was sitting on the back seat. The realization of the fast food wrappers on the floor suddenly made him self-conscious. He tucked his bag with his laptop by his legs and put the camera in the cupholder.

“Keep the headlights off,” Alex commanded from the back seat.

Jay did as he was told but he gave Alex a look over his shoulder. “You do know I have to see to drive, right?”

As if in response, lightning spiderwebbed across the night sky, giving slim dirt road a brief glow. They all saw it. Alex gestured ahead. Wind blew across the small clearing as Jay gently urged the car forward and fat drops of rain fell onto the windows like heavy footsteps.

Whenever Jay reached a bend in the path, he’d wait for a lightning strike before continuing. They drove like this for ten minutes in silence, a sporadic rain eventually starting up, hitting the car between the trees.. Every flash of light cast strange shadows and Jay tried his best to ignore them. 

“Did you see that?” he heard Amy whisper from behind him. In his peripheral vision, Jay saw Tim turn and look at her.

“There’s nothing there,” Alex said. 

Jay saw nothing, but in the next flash he could have believed he did. He concentrated on the upcoming bend. They had to be close to the main road.

“There,” she said, her voice rising. “It’s a man—”

Alex shushed her. “It’s a tree,” he insisted.

“He has a gun!”

The tires started turning in the ruts and Jay slowed to wait for the next flash of lightning.

“Amy,” Alex said, but his next words were drowned out as there was a sharp cracking of thunder and Jay felt the whole car shudder. The instantaneous flash of lightning revealed a Humvee blocking the path in front of them. Several armed men were walking toward the car.

Nobody moved. Through the sound of the rain, a rough male voice called to them. “Step out of the vehicle! Hands first!”

“Jay,” Alex said.

Reaching for the door, Jay prepared to get out. At this point, there wasn’t much else he saw he could do. They’d be safer with the authorities, right? Alex had a gun, but it wasn’t like the guns in the hands of the men who were trained to use them. Those men were in front of them—shiny in their soaking BDUs, the automatic rifles gleaming in their hands.

“Jay,” Alex hissed urgently, like he was in pain. “Don’t get out.”

“What do you want me to do?” Jay said back, never taking his eyes off the windshield. The rain warped the shape of the soldiers into dripping caricatures between swipes of the wipers.

“Put it in reverse, get us out of here.”

Tim turned his head. “You’re going to get us killed.” Jay wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

“Jay, they’re the ones that’ll kill us. They’re not the good guys. _Get us out of here_.”

“Step out of the car, please,” the voice said.

The pressure of knowing that whatever he did next could impact the rest of them for the remainder of their possibly short lives, Jay felt his whole body grow cold. One hand was on the door, the other on the gear shift. He held both tightly, as if he could sense the right decision if he squeezed hard enough.

It was Amy’s frightened whimpering behind him that made him choose to throw it in reverse.

* * *

Jay was an exceptional driver. Unlike most of his Driver’s Ed class, he had no problem parallel parking. An attempt was always made to go the speed limit, and he had never lost control of his car before, much less crashed it. His parents had bought him his Mazda when he turned 18 as a graduation present.

He hadn’t thought about his parents since he arrived, and now, under the drum of the rain and the harsh shouting of the men, they were all he could think about. Why hadn’t he gone to them first? Were they even alive? He clenched the gearshift, feeling it resist and then settle into reverse. All he had to do was drive. If his parents were alive he’d see them again if he got out of there. 

Jay grabbed Tim’s seat and turned, putting his left hand on the steering wheel and stretching his foot against the gas. The car lurched backward and Jay jerked it around the bend.

The first bullet punched through the windshield and out Jay’s window as he turned. Amy screamed. Alex grabbed her shoulder and pulled her toward the middle seat where he could put himself between her and men who were shooting at them.

A second and third bullet passed right over Jay’s shoulder. There was a sinking feeling in his gut that grew with every passing second, crowding out the heroic recklessness that had burst forth so suddenly. Any second a round could drill right through his head, or, worse, through his shoulder or arm. He’d live long enough to see his friends shot or taken before he was dragged out of the car himself.

Jay had never really contemplated death. He wasn’t religious by any stretch of the word. Death was a massive black barrier in his mind and it was unclear if it was doorway or a wall. It didn’t matter in the end, did it? The back lights painted the watery rear window in red tones but there was nothing beyond it. Only darkness. He only hoped that if his parents were dead (and he did, as an alternative to becoming one of _them_ , broken and sick) he would see them again if he died as well. The thought of an afterlife was almost appealing now—if they survived he made a note to look into it.

More gunfire. A few bullets hit the car. Jay felt one of the right tires blow out, the whole car swerving violently toward the trees. Lightning showed him the next bend, turning onto a berm between the forest and a sloping field. He pushed on the gas.

It was too late when the lightning flashed again. Bodies, unarmed and crooked, were stumbling onto the path. Jay had no time to do anything but gasp as the first one smashed against the back of the Mazda, cracking the window before spinning away. Amy screamed again, muffled by the thumping flat tire and Alex’s shirt. It was echoed by someone outside.

Jay stiffened in the seat, his foot smashing down on the gas instead of moving to the brake. He heard Tim beside him, muttering prayers lined with profanity. Another person took out one of Jay’s tail lights and the whole car rocked violently as they slipped beneath the tires. By the time Jay started to turn the car was already starting down the berm.

The whole car swung sideways, tipping onto its good tires. It seemed like an eternity before the Mazda turned over completely. The rest was a blur as the car tumbled down the muddy slope. There was a flash of pain as he felt his head rock sideways into the window. He heard the simultaneous _crunch_ of the windows breaking as the roof compacted when it turned onto the ground. 

As Jay drifted out of consciousness, he heard the shouting of the men up the hill. Not just shouting, either—screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of my favorite chapters to write. I like seeing Jay as the awkward hero. 
> 
> Unfortunately I also like it when heroes crash and burn sometimes.


	5. Chapter 5

Jay was aware of the pain—he was swimming in it. His neck and shoulders ached, the sharpness in his legs. His head was pounding. He could feel gravity pulling his body down, so he knew the car had ended up on its tires instead of the roof. There was something else, too. Despite the burning in his skin and joints, he was cold.

Water splashed on his face and he opened his eyes. It was dark. “Tim?”

He heard Tim groan. Lightning flashed. Somewhere nearby there was an even crackling that he knew wasn’t thunder. Men shouting. Screaming. Jay felt a chill race up his spine.

Not just any screaming, _that_ screaming.

“Tim, we have to get out of here,” he said. A breeze came in through his shattered window. He wasn’t the first to say that—another voice echoed in his mind.

“Alex?” Jay remembered his other passengers. “Amy?” His neck rebuked him sharply when he turned his head to look in the backseat. “Tim, where’s Alex?”

The door was open and even in the dark Jay could tell that there was nobody else in the car. He reached down to unbuckle his seatbelt. In a flash of lightning, something caught his eye in his lap. It was his camera.

He forgot the seatbelt for a second, picking up the camcorder. Flipping the viewfinder open, he turned it on, surprised to see the screen spring to life, illuminating the rainwater that covered it. Jay turned on the night vision, panning weakly to Tim.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Tim’s eyes opened, flickering with the flashes of light. There was a dark smear of blood down the right side of his face where he had cracked the window with his forehead. In the green infrared, it looked black. “No,” he said.

Turning, Jay tried to open his door. The handle was slick with rain but he managed to pull it, leaning into it and hoping he wouldn’t tumble out. He didn’t. The door opened two inches and stopped with a thud. The seatbelt tugged at his collarbone and he reached down and unbuckled it. Shouldering the door again, Jay peered out the smashed window.

“Tim, I can’t get out,” he said, turning back. “There’s a tree. We have to go out your door.”

Tim groaned. “Go out your window.”

There was a pause between them as Jay panned back to Tim’s face. His hair was slick and black in the tint, his eyes shut. Under the pain, a hot anger started to bubble up inside him. Why didn’t Tim understand? Someone was going to come after them at some point and he preferred to be long gone by then.

Of course, then there was Alex. Jay couldn’t help but think he had the right idea by leaving, but it hurt that he hadn't even tried to help. He had gone through the effort to get both Jay and Tim into this mess and now it seemed like a very real possibility that they were both going to die there.

Jay sighed, reaching down to where his keys were still stuck in the ignition. The car was still on. Was it drivable? He was tempted to reach down and put it in gear, to turn the headlights on.

No, Jay thought, that’d be a last resort. He had no idea what kind of explosion that could trigger. He couldn’t smell anything, but it was still raining pretty hard. And the lights—who knows who or what they might attract.

“Are you really that hurt?” Jay asked.

Tim’s eyes flicked open, looking right into the camera. He didn’t say anything. Jay saw his hand move to the door and, with a painful wince, he pulled the handle and the door popped open.

“Happy?”

***

It took Jay longer than it made him comfortable to coax Tim out of the car. Tim confessed that his shoulder hurt—he had tweaked his back. It wasn’t bad enough to prevent him from moving, but every move Tim made he was sure to let Jay know how much he was in pain. Eventually, Jay resorted to threatening to leave him behind. He hoped that bluffing would be enough. There was no way he’d be able to leave the car without Tim in tow knowing that Tim was physically able to leave.

Luckily, Tim’s sense of self-preservation was stronger than the fear of the pain he was in.

Jay was just climbing into the passenger’s seat when there was movement on the slope. A body was stumbling toward them.

Both men froze, and then Jay could see Tim slowly edging around the back bumper of the car. The black form hissed as it neared them, spotting Jay’s bony frame through the open passenger door. Jay felt his breath hitch. It was one of _them_.

He was caught in a moment of indecision—go forward, toward the thing, and shut the door, or go back and hope that he moved fast enough to get out the driver’s side window before it could grab him. A split second later, the mass lurched and Jay willed every muscle in his body to lurch, too, grabbing for the slick handle of the passenger’s door.

The whole car rocked as the door slammed shut and a man’s bloody face smashed into the cracked window. He snarled against the glass and Jay could see it bulging inward. It wasn’t going to hold for very long. He willed himself back across the center console.

Tim was at his window. “Come on,” he said, reaching in to help Jay.

His pain dulled under the adrenaline, Jay pushed himself through the window, squeezing between the car and the tree. The man in the window was snarling, the cracks in the glass splitting farther with every push.

Once Jay made it out, standing was harder than he thought. It hurt to extend his left leg all the way. Tim caught him on his first faulty step.

“You good?” Tim asked, but it came with the flat quality of a statement. Jay had no choice but to _be good_.

Jay nodded, remembering the camera in his hand. “My bag,” he croaked. The adrenaline rush was dying slowly and he could feel the chill of the rain in his fingers and soaked shoes despite the warm night air. How long had it been night? What time was it?

With a small sigh, Tim reached back in the empty window and grabbed Jay’s bag.

“Let’s go.”

Up the hill, the sound of gunfire still fell sporadically, the screams fewer and farther between. Tim slung the bag over his shoulder and started through the woods. Jay watched the man finally break through the window enough to get his head in, followed by a bloody hand, and his stomach soured.

By the time Jay managed to catch up to Tim, the gunfire was no louder than the rain falling from the trees around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so terribly long. I actually have the time to finish this now, so fingers crossed I'll do that.


	6. Chapter 6

At some point during the trek through the woods, the sky began to lighten despite the rain. Jay wanted to tell Tim to stop, to slow down so he could sit and rest for a minute without getting too far behind, but it didn’t feel like the best thing to do. They had found a trail not long after leaving the car, muddy and slick with leaves, and they decided it would be easier to follow it for a while than to cut across it and keep pushing their way through the undergrowth.

They had been walking for a while now, but Jay still didn’t feel safe. When he finally did call out to Tim, it was out of sheer inability to keep moving. He reached out, leaning against a tree.

“Tim. I need to stop.”

The swooshing of Tim’s soaked pants stopped and the patter of rain took over. Without the constant, painful movement, Jay felt the cold raindrops on his neck and shoulders. He was soaked, and his leg ached, pain from his knee spiking with every step. Bile rose in his chest.

“A little farther,” Jay heard Tim say hoarsely.

 _To where?_ Jay closed his eyes and thought about the pain and how it didn’t move no matter how many steps he took. It was like a leech, a lump sticking to the bone, catching on the muscles, the tendons. God, it hurt, but concentrating on it pushed back the nausea. _Where are we even going? There’s nothing. Death. Those things._

He listened for the screaming but there was nothing but the sound of water on already soggy ground.

“Jay, come on.”

Swooshing footsteps. The blood on Tim’s face had been mostly washed off, diluted to a thin stream. His eyes were clear, though, and after a moment he shouldered himself under Jay’s arm, prompting them both to move forward.

“We have to keep going, Jay.”

“Where?”

“Shelter, somewhere we can hide until this has blown over.”

Jay leaned heavily on Tim as they moved up the trail, but they barely made it a few unsteady steps before Jay let go of Tim in order to collapse on the side of the trail to vomit. There wasn’t much of it. For a moment, Jay thought about the last time he really ate. There was the granola bar back at the house, but that was at least twelve hours ago, probably more.

Before that—

He wretched again, spitting to try to get the taste out of his mouth when nothing came up. What there was quickly drained under the layer of wet leaves and decay, leaving no trace that he had ever been sick in the first place.

“Come on,” Tim repeated. As Jay rose, Tim got under him again, letting Jay’s arm drape on his shoulders.

The rest of the walk was a blur. In the low light, the forest all looked the same. They could have been walking for hours for all Jay knew, but he doubted that reality. The only thing he was sure of was the fact that after a while, the light around him went dim and Tim let him sit. They were in some small building—the door gone and the windows knocked out. The floor was damp.

“Where are we?”

Tim shushed him. “I think there was someone behind us.”

The thought of having to get up and move again provoked Jay’s nausea. He held his breath, trying to compose himself. It was harder than he thought. His head hurt. His mouth was dry and sour, and the longer he sat there he more he could smell the bitter taint of bile when he exhaled. Tim stood next to him in the space between the window above Jay’s head and the door.

A minute later, there was light smacking of shoes.

“Tim? Jay? I know you’re up here.”

“Alex?” Jay croaked, but the sound was quickly overridden by Tim’s voice escalating as he turned his head to look out the door.

“Alex?!”

“Don’t shout, Tim.”

Alex stepped in the door. Tim stepped, too, pushing Alex so hard that he stumbled back and would have fallen had he not run into the flimsy, half-rotted wall first. Just outside the door, Jay heard Amy gasp.

“Tim—”

“Where the fuck did you go?”

Jay tried to get up, but he barely got his good leg under him before his head started swimming and he leaned against the wall, watching as Tim grabbed Alex by his shirt. They struggled for a moment before Alex reached back and pulled out his gun. He pushed it into Tim’s chest.

“Back off,” he barked.

Something resembling a sob escaped Amy’s mouth. “Alex, don’t.”

Jay leaned up against the wall. He could feel his soaking clothes clinging to his body, invoking a shiver. He didn’t feel good, and there was nothing about what was folding in front of him that made him feel any better.

“What did you expect me to do?” Alex asked. “Wait around for you two to wake up? I didn’t even know if you were alive!”

“And checking was so hard?” Tim said.

There was a moment of tense silence before Alex let his arm drop, tucking the gun back into his jeans. “It doesn’t matter now. We need to go.”

“Where?” Jay said.

“Out of here.”

Jay closed his eyes, frowning. “Because that worked so well before.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

If he were being honest, Jay truly believed it sounded better to just sit and rest for a while. He wasn’t sure how they were going to get through the military cordon. Driving out had been a half-baked idea at best, and now that there was a military presence in the park, the chances of getting back to the road that ran along the far side were slim.

Where else was there to go? Back into town? If there was no military presence there, they would be there, there was no doubt. So what did that leave?

“Why can’t we just stay here?”

Alex looked at him, looked from Tim to Amy and back to Jay. “You like movies, don’t you, Jay?”

Jay’s frown stayed, patient in its stubbornness.

“What happens in outbreak movies? What happens when the military can’t contain the virus?”

“It is contained, you saw the men with guns.”

Alex nodded. “So what happens to all the people in the quarantine zone when it’s contained?”

That tense silence was back. Even with his headache, Jay saw where this was going. As much as he didn’t want to, he agreed, though it meant he needed to move again.

“Even if we stay here, we can’t stay here forever. They can’t risk the virus getting out. We know we’re healthy, but they don’t. Best case scenario is we get taken alive and quarantined elsewhere with no breakouts. Nobody in the quarantine turns into one of those rabid people and we get to leave in a couple weeks, maybe with some compensation or something.

“But something will go wrong. We don’t know if they’ll shoot us on sight. You two look like hell, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Even if we do get into some sort of quarantine, given that the military is even trying to round up healthy people, who knows how much they know about what’s happening.”

“Do you know?” Tim asked.

Alex shook his head. “We could be infected for all I know.”

“Do you know _anything_? Or did you just call us for no reason?”

“It got out of hand quicker than I thought. I was only back in town to visit my parents when they put us under quarantine.”

“Christ, Alex, _do you know anything_?”

Before Alex could answer, there were the sound of several footfalls on the trail outside.


End file.
